OCTOBER 2 – Last Thursday Stan worked on the water problem at Andrea’s house and installed a new pressure tank. The water pump seems to still work, so at least we won’t have to replace it. It’s great to have water again at her house!
I created a new temporary “pen” for Sprout below and behind the haystacks in our stack yard, so she can graze that grass. She doesn’t try to get through my fake hot wire (baling twine strung between step-on posts) so I can graze her just about anywhere around the barnyard.
Granddaughter Heather in Canada sent some photos of her two boys – Baby Janes and Joseph taking a nap, and the two of them in the car with their dog Dude.
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| two sleepy boys |
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| Baby James & Joseph with Dude |
Friday Stan worked on our mid-size John Deere tractor, putting in a new water pump. The old one was completely worn out and it’s amazing it held up through this year’s haying season, pulling the swather.
That evening I called the cows and calves down from the field above Andrea’s house and put them in the lower swamp pasture so they’d be handier the next morning when we needed to get them into the corrals early.
Saturday morning we put them in the corral and sorted off the calves, and were just finishing when Dr. Cope (our vet) arrived. Stan, Dani and her friends Jack and Dakota helped us put the cows down the chute. Andrea caught their heads and gave one of the shots, and Jack ran the squeeze and the tailgate. It started raining and rained fairly hard for a while. It was hard to keep my clipboard list (of cows) from getting wet, because even though I had it in a plastic bag I had to take it out each time we put a cow through the chute, to make a note on whether she was pregnant or not and when she was bred. I have breeding dates on most of the cows but not all of them.
Dr. Cope preg-checked the cows and we had one open cow (Mini Mag) and two open heifers (Magda and Pandemonium—daughters of Magdalena and Panda). We will sell them later this fall. We vaccinated all the other cows and gave them their semi-annual shots. By the time we finished with the cows it wasn’t raining as much.
Cope gave all the heifer calves their Bangs (brucellosis) vaccinations, and we vaccinated all the calves with 8-way clostridial vaccine (for blackleg, malignant edema, redwater, etc.) and a modified-live-virus vaccine against 5 different respiratory diseases. Andrea put in their nose flaps, to start the weaning process.
We put the cows and calves in the little pasture above the house, and the heifers down in the lower back field. There’s enough grass for the cows and calves in the field above the house to get them through the weaning process. The calves can’t nurse their mamas because of the nose flaps, but can still stay with their mothers for comfort.
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| calf with nose flap |
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It rained that evening but the calves weren’t stressed too much because they were still with their mamas for comfort.
The next day it rained more, until late morning. We took a block of salt to the cows and calves above the house. The calves were doing fine, and weren’t very unhappy at all; the cows were more upset because the calves weren’t able to nurse, and their udders were getting tight.
It cleared off and got colder, down to 28 degrees the next morning. Andrea and Stan went up to the 320 pasture on the 4-wheeler and cleaned out the two springboxes and water troughs. Both springboxes were full of mud and the pipes to the troughs were barely running. On their way back down they saw a few cows in Alfonso’s 160-acre pasture, including a cow of John Millers with snakebite—a very swollen face. That afternoon they went to town and bought more salt blocks for the cows.
I took a few more photos when I walked through the cows and calves that afternoon to check on them. They were lounging around, content, pretty well weaned. I took one photo of a calf grazing; the nice thing about the nose flaps is that the calves can still eat and drink just fine. They just can’t get a teat in their mouth to nurse mom.
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| cows and calves lounging around |
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| calves with nose flaps |
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| still able to graze in spite of nose flaps |
Tuesday was a little warmer (30 degrees that morning, up to 65 degrees by mid-afternoon). We put hay in the feeder in the main corral and put the bulls down the chute to vaccinate them. The smaller bull went down the chute first, which was a good thing, because the bigger bull didn’t fit; he has grown so much that he got stuck where the chute runway makes a slight bend, and couldn’t go forward or backward. We had to remove the cross-piece at the top (that helps hold the runway together) to expand the sides a little bit so he could squeeze on by that spot. Even then it was a struggle for him to make it on down the runway and out through the squeeze chute because it was such a tight fit.
We’ve decided to sell both those bulls, even though they are just 3 years old. The smaller one is getting too ornery and aggressive (even though he was very mellow and good-natured when he was younger) and the bigger one just keeps growing and will eventually be much too large—and his daughters will probably be too big, as well. We are trying to reduce our cow size, not make them bigger—since an efficient smaller cow can wean off a calf that’s a greater percent of her own body weight and eats less than a big cow and you can have more cows per acre and produce more total pounds of calves.
Andrea took Lynn to town to the doctor that day, to try to figure out why he is dizzy when he gets up in the morning and every time he stands up. The doctor is not sure what’s going on to create the dizziness.
Stan got the other part that was needed for the tractor water pump, and finished putting it together. Alfonso and John Miller moved most of Alfonso’s cows down the road past our place, taking them from the Gooch place to his lower fields below us.
I went to the end of our driveway to make sure no cows came down our way, and talked briefly with John and asked if they found all their cows. He got the one Andrea saw the day before with snakebite, but he still has one bull missing out on the range.
Wednesday Stan and Andrea drove her little jeep to the 320 and took three tubs of protein supplement up to the ridge salt-ground where the main trail comes up out of Baker Creek. The grass is so dry this fall from lack of rain though summer that there’s no green left in it (except a few places down along the creek bottom); the grass is so low in protein that the cows won’t do well without a supplement.
The upper trough was still not working very well (still some mud in the pipeline) so they came back home and got the portable air compressor and took it up there to blow the mud out of the line. When they got the pipe cleaned out completely, it was running a very good stream, which will keep the water trough full and clean, with water cycling through it. The cows will have plenty of water when we take them up there.
Lynn helped me take another bale of hay to the bulls in the main corral. We left them in there until we could get the fence fixed in their back pen.
When Andrea got home from their second trip to the 320, she took the dam out of the creek at our ditch that serves most of our fields on this side of the creek, so she could shut the head-gate securely for winter. We don’t want any water seeping into that ditch, to make ice flows across our fields.
Granddaughter Heather sent a few more photos—of baby James riding in the tractor with her doing field work.
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| Baby James sleeping on the job in the tractor |
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| Baby James helping mom |
Yesterday we put the bulls briefly back in their pen while we brought the cows and calves in from the field above the house. We put the calves down the chute and took out their nose flaps, and removed the eye patches from several calves that we treated earlier for pinkeye.
We put the calves in the orchard pasture next to the calving pen, and filled a water tank for them. They are weaned by now, and not missing their mothers very much. We put their mothers and in the pasture below heifer hill until we can sort them again and take the pregnant cows to the 320. We put the heifers and young cows that won’t go to the 320 up in the swamp pasture.
Then we put the bulls back in the main corral, and Stan and Andrea helped Lynn tear out some of the old fence along the side of the bull corral where we feed them. The old posts are rotting off and the bulls have been pushing them over (in spite of a prop we put against the spot where we feed them) and the old poles where they reach through to eat their hay are getting rotten and fragile.
Stan helped Lynn get our old post pounder hooked up the little tractor and get the hydraulics working again. It’s been many years since we’ve used it. Michael has been building and rebuilding fences for us these past years, using his jack-hammer type post pounder that’s a lot faster. He is so busy right now with all his custom fencing jobs, however, that it will be quite a while before he can do any fence work for us, so we decided to get our old post-pounder working and set a few posts in that bull corral ourselves.
Andrea and I made a short ride on Willow and Dottie while they were getting the post-pounder working again. We hadn’t ridden since we got the neighbor’s bull off the range for them, and that’s been almost 2 weeks. I took photos of her on Willow and of some mule deer that bounced up out of the sagebrush as we rode by them.
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| Andrea on Willow |
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| deer in the sagebrush |
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| Christopher on tractor |
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| helping Lynn drive tractor |
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| Christopher and Lynn taking the tractor and post-pounder back to the barnyard |
Today was warm, up to 78 degrees—very warm for October! We desperately need rain (more than just the brief showers we’ve had); fires are still burning around us and the air is still smoky.
Andrea and Stan went to town for more screws, to finish putting up the poles along the bull fence. When they got it finished we put the bulls back in their pen and they tried out their new feeding area and it worked great.
Andrea, Stan and Dani went to the Homecoming football game this evening and Christopher stayed here with Lynn and me and watched a movie.
OCTOBER 8 - On Saturday we took our cows to the 320. It was another warm day (up to 78 degrees) so we started early. Andrea, Dani and her friend Jack helped us take the cows. We first sorted off the 4 we plan to sell (the 2 open heifers and the one open cow and Panda) and left them in the little pasture above the house.
Then Andrea, Dani and I got our horses saddled and ready. Lynn went ahead of the cows to shut all the neighbors’ gates along the road. We started the cows up the horse road and when we got them up on the main road, along the Gooch place, Stan and Jack went ahead of them on Lynn’s 4-wheeler (since Andrea’s 4-wheeler broke something underneath it on the trip to the 320 to check water troughs), and Jack got off and walked along the places with no fence (Alfonso’s fence along the Gooch place is falling down and flat in several places). We three riders tried to keep the cows on the hillside across the road from the bad fence and Jack was our foot-soldier, able to go along the inside or outside of Alfonso’s flat fence when necessary--if the cows decided to go that direction. We were really glad that Alfonso moved his main herd (more than 100 cows plus calves) out of that field a few days earlier, or it would have been very difficult trying to keep his cows from coming out to join ours, and ours from wanting to go into that field.
We made it almost to the end of that field, just below Loucks house (where Stan was sitting on the 4-wheeler guarding that driveway and yard since there is no fence or gate there at all!) when one of our cows (Zorra Rose) managed to get past Dani on Ed and go down off the road and next to the fence. Dani tried to get her back on the road but the cow jumped over the dilapidated wire gate (a tangled mess of barbed-wire that is only about 2 feet high) and into Alfonso’s field. The cow headed down across the field toward a couple cows and calves of Alfonso’s that were down by the creek, but Dani jumped off Ed and managed to get the gate open and get back on her horse and gallop after the cow, while Andrea and I held the main herd on the road. Dani got the cow back out through the gate and on the road again and we started moving the herd on up the road. Jack struggled with the wire gate, trying to shut it, and once we got the herd past Loucks driveway (where there’s no gate), Stan drove down there and helped him get it shut.
We got the herd on up the road past Loucks and Mark Myers place where the fence is also very bad; Stan went through the fence and walked along on the inside to block the holes in the fence, and Jack brought the 4-wheeler along the road. Lynn had shut Mark’s gate, and put up the fake hot wire across Tom Peets’ driveway so the cows didn’t try to go in those places.
We had one more challenging episode as we went up along our upper place next to Michael’s cows on the wild meadow. They wanted to come with us and ran up alongside our herd on the inside of the fence. At one point one of our young cows got down off the road and nearly went over the low fence to join them, but Dottie and I scrambled down there in the slippery shale and discouraged the cow from jumping the fence--and she backed up and climbed back to the road. After we got past the fields it got easier. The cows remembered from last year and knew where they were going, and started up the trail through the sagebrush to go up to the 320. Andrea hurried ahead of them on Willow and got the wire gate open out of the road pasture, then gave the gate key to Dani who went on ahead of the herd to open the 320 gate.
The cows were hot and tired and we let them line out and take their time. It went very smoothly from that point, quite a contrast to last year when we were taking them up there in the snow, with slippery footing, and had the problem with a couple young cows trying to run back down the mountain (and my crash with Dottie when we galloped down the mountain to outrun one of them to the gate).
This year was a lot easier getting up to the 320 from the road. Dani went ahead of them again to open the gate in the 320 cross-fence on the ridge and the cows trudged up the jeep road to the ridge, as she called them.
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| cows trudging up the jeep road |
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| cows following Dani |
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| Andrea on Willow, following the cows |
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| Andrea following the tail end of the herd up to the ridge |
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| cows heading into Baker Creek from ridge |
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| Andrea shutting the ridge gate after the last of the cows came through |
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| cows going into Baker Creek |
We got home before Emily had to go to work, so Andrea was able to take care of Christopher. Stan welded the broken parts on Andrea’s 4-wheeler, so it is functional again.
The next morning was cold (31 degrees) but hot again in the afternoon. Andrea and I rode to the 320 to check on the cows. We found where they had grazed along the creek, and then bedded in the tall grass, but had moved on.
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| riding up Baker Creek |
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| looking for cows |
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| water trough in Baker Creek |
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| cows lounging around on salt ground |
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| cows using the protein tubs |
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| riding up on the ridge to check the top gate |
When we got home, Andrea shut off the rest of our ditches for winter and we took care of Christopher (with Emily at work).
Monday was warm again. Stan worked on Andrea’s car, fixing the leaky exhaust pipe, and changed the oil in Dani’s car. Andrea and I went over to our lower back field and checked the fence between it and the upper field, and down along the jack-fence in the brush where it meets the bull corral. We haven’t checked that old fence for many years—deep in the brush—but it is still functional. So we got the young cows (the 3 pregnant heifers and the 3 that will be second calvers) from the swamp pasture, and put them in the lower back field.
Lynn went to town to do the town errands and get groceries and cases of canned vegetables during the case goods sale at the store—to augment our winter’s supply. Andrea and Stan took Christopher with them that afternoon and evening on a jeep ride up the creek and up the right fork to the site of the old Harmony mine. The old buildings are gone now—burned up in the big fire in 2003 that burned that whole area, including part of our cattle range.
The next day we moved the calves to the field below the lane where there is a lot more grass. Andrea and Stan gathered up all the irrigation dams from the various fields and rolled them up to put in the old “sick barn” for winter. They stopped here for awhile. Stan was curious about the history of the old Harmony mine so I dug out the Patchwork booklets that the kids made in their English class in high school.
The students in that class researched various aspects of history of Lemhi County and put their efforts together in a booklet. The year Andrea had that class, she wrote about Withington Creek--the early homesteaders and wild times on the creek, including the history of the Harmony mine (which was operating during the 1920’s and early 30’s and at one time the controlling interest was owned by Al Capone, the Chicago gangster). Andrea had used some old photos of the Harmony mine and some of the people—photos contributed by my brother. In rummaging around the old buildings when we were kids, my brother found several old rolls of film and developed them; they were old photos taken during the time the mine was active. Stan was interested in reading Andrea’s story so we sent that booklet with them.
That evening we went up to Andrea’s house for supper. Stan barbecued some meat and we took a fruit salad and jello and had a pot luck dinner.
Yesterday morning Michael called us to say that he and Carolyn could take our calves to Butte the next day (to be sold in the special feeder calf sale on Friday), so we got the calves in from the field and put them in the orchard where they will be easier for the brand inspector to look at.
Andrea and I made a fast ride to the 320 to check on the cows and saw 3 elk on the far side. The elk were pretty spooked and left when they saw us, even though we were almost a mile away. They’ve been pretty stirred up by hunters. There are lots of elk tracks going and coming through the 320—they are probably spending a lot of time in there, and hopefully won’t eat too much of our protein supplement! We rode on up past Preacher’s Spring to check the side gate and top gate and to find all the cows.
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| Andrea riding toward Preachers spring |
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| Heading around the mountain to check the side gate |
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| coming down the ridge from top gate |
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| going into Baker Creek to find cows |
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| cows at salt ground in Baker Creek |
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Andrea riding down Baker Creek
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Later that afternoon, doing chores, I started to put more water in the trough for the calves in the orchard and noticed that one of them had pooped in it, so I had to bucket all that dirty water out and rinse out the water trough and refill it.
One of my editors called that evening (BEEF magazine) to tell me the magazine is being suspended, along with all the other publications under the Informa umbrella. That means I will be losing 4 of my markets for freelance articles, which was really discouraging news.
Today was warm again. Stan and Andrea helped us bring the calves in from the orchard and sort them. We put the heifers we plan to keep (and one steer who still has glue on one side of his face from the eye patch he wore while recovering from pinkeye) in the side pen. Even though the steer’s eye has healed, the buyers might pay less for him because of the evidence of pinkeye treatment. He can live with our heifers for a while and we will sell him later.
We left the other calves in the calving pen, handy for the brand inspector to look at when he came mid-morning. Michael and Carolyn arrived after that with their trailer and we loaded the calves and sent them on their way. The calves will sell tomorrow morning at the auction yard near Butte, Montana.
We put the heifers and their steer buddy in the big field below the lane where there is plenty of good grass for them until it snows under.
I’ve been grazing Sprout in makeshift pens around our haystacks in the stackyards and she cleaned up all the grass there, so this afternoon I made her a new grazing area in the pen below the bull corral. The bulls grazed it a little this summer until they broke through the old jack-fence at the bottom end and got out; that ended their grass grazing and they had to stay in the corral from that point on. There’s a lot of regrowth of grass in that pen, so Sprout might as well eat it, and save hay. I made a fake fence along the thick brush, to keep her in the upper end and out of the brush and the bog.
Christopher stayed with us awhile this evening and ate supper with us while Emily was at work, and enjoyed watching Oklahoma (Rogers and Hammerstein) with us; he loves musicals and is fascinated by the singing and dancing. He bounces and sways to the music if he’s standing in his playpen while he watches.
OCTOBER 14 – Stan and Andrea left last Friday to drive to California. Andrea will stay there a couple weeks with him and we’ll try to take care of everything here while she is gone, including babysitting Christopher when Emily is at work. Dani is helping with that, as well.
That Friday afternoon Dani and I rode to the 320 to check on the cows. I took photos as we went into Baker Creek; the trees are starting to change colors for fall.
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| Dani riding Shiloh |
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| going toward Baker Creek crossing |
There were 4 cows down in the Baker Creek canyon, but the other 9 were bedded along the fence on the mountain on the town side. We saw them from the ridge as we went out to check their protein tubs. We didn’t have time to go over there and look at them closely, however, since we had to get back in time to take care of Christopher when Em went to work. At least they were all present. We decided to try to ride up there again on a day when we had more time to check them all.
Our calves did fairly well at the sale, bringing an average price for what sold that day. The heifers averaged 535 pounds and brought $1.22 per pound, and the steers averaged 519 pounds and brought $1.48 per pound.
Saturday was very windy; our weather was changing and it rained a little that night, with snow on the mountains. Before it rained, Lynn helped me haul more bales from my hay shed around for the bulls, and put a tarp over a little stack there. We’ll have to feed them another week and a half or so until Michael can haul them (and our 4 cull cows/heifers) to the sale. That evening Dani and Christopher and her friend Dakota came to eat summer with us.
Sunday was cool and windy all day, feeling like Fall. I tried to call Dani or Emily late morning but no one answered the phone so Lynn drove up to their house to check on their plans for the day and found Christopher out on the deck playing with the cats! He’d figured out how to open the sliding door and go outside by himself. Emily and Dani were both asleep and didn’t know he’d gone outside. So Lynn and Emily put a jam in the door so it couldn’t be opened by one little ambitious year-and-a-half old boy.
Our fall colors are nice right now but won’t last long, the way the wind has been blowing leaves off the trees, so I took a few photos when I went out midday to put Breezy back in her pen after her daily 1 to 2 hours of green grass. I took photos of her in her temporary grazing spot, and photos of Ed and Dottie, the cows above the house, and the fall colors above Willow’s pen.
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| Breezy grazing |
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| Dottie |
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| Ed |
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| cows grazing |
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| hay shed |
Dani and her friend Dakota went to his family’s barbecue that evening to Lynn and I took care of Christopher while Emily was at work. He had supper with us; he liked the corn and jello and bananas in the jello. Then he played in his playpen and watched an old movie with us (the musical Flower Drum Song –1961, Rogers and Hammerstein). He thoroughly enjoys musicals as long as there’s lots of action and dancing.
Monday morning was windy and cool, with strong gusts of wind and threat of rain but Dani and I braved the weather and rode up to the 320-acre pasture to check on the cows. Deer season opened and there are also some other hunts going on, for elk, so the hills are crawling with hunters. We wanted to make sure our cattle were ok. We found them all up by the top salt-ground, some eating on the protein tubs and some grazing near the ridge, just out from the timber. I took photos as Dani and I came up the ridge and approached the salt-ground.
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| Dani riding up to check cows |
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| checking cows at salt ground |
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| cows eating protein |
There have been a lot of elk eating on the protein, too. There were many elk tracks and lots of elk poop up and down that ridge, so we’re afraid our protein tubs won’t last very long for the cattle.
We rode on up the ridge and checked the top gate, then went down into Baker Creek and checked the water trough. The overflow pipe was plugged with leaves and fir needles so the trough was running over, making a mud hole, so I cleaned out the overflow and got it running again. Then we rode down Baker Creek.
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| Dani riding down Baker Creek |
We came home down the ridge, trying not to blow away with the wind. Shiloh was spooky and nervous with everything in motion, and thought there were cougars behind every waving bush!
That afternoon I cooked a big dinner and we had Emily and Christopher join us for dinner, since Em didn’t have to work that day. Dani was working at her part-time job (a few hours several days a week in the late-afternoon/evening at a local motel) so she wasn’t able to join us for dinner. I took some photos of Christopher—while he was in his highchair waiting for dinner.
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| Christopher waiting for dinner |
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| Christopher - ready to eat |
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| goofing around |
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| dinner antics |
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| very thirsty |
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| Em & Christopher |
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| Dani mowing weeds & tall grass |
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| looking better! |
Now we’ll be able to see the calving pen better when cows are lying there next to the yard fence—and can watch their calving progress from the house. We wanted to get the tall grass and weeds mowed before it snows.
I also took a photo of the fall colors along the creek above the horse pens. I don’t know how long the golden leaves will last, with all the wind we are having, but they are beautiful right now.
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| fall colors |
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